Labour failure

There's always been something of the religious mantra about the Left's refusal to believe that the British private sector was capable of picking up the slack by creating jobs to replace those lost in the public sector.

Perhaps it's a lack of imagination which leaves them unable to conceive of jobs being created through mechanisms which they don't understand. Perhaps it's egotism, driving a belief that their actions in government will always be more effective than anything the private sector could do. Perhaps it's simply a desperate hope that economic suffering will help them to prosper politically.

Consider the following six quotes, from senior figures in the Labour Party, prominent commentators and Ed Miliband:

"We were also told that public sector job cuts would be more than outweighed by the rise in private sector jobs, but I am afraid that employment is falling because the private sector has been unable to deliver the recovery we were promised. It has been a complete fantasy."

"David Cameron and business leaders claimed in unison that the private sector would "take up the slack" of some half a million workers ejected from the public sector. They cheered, but nobody could illustrate how that would happen."

Westminster Digested, The Guardian's "satirical" take on politics, 1 December 2011:

"Cameron:...Only a moron would have imagined the private sector would suddenly pick up the slack in the worst depression since the 30s!"

"Private sector employment has jumped by 1.3million to a record high of 24.1million under the Coalition Government – while public sector employment has fallen by 423,000. But last year the increase in private sector jobs was almost five times the fall in public sector work."

So despite Ed Balls' fervent hopes, it turns out the private sector could and did take up the slack - and then some.

It's not the most extensive poster campaign in political history but
Grant Shapps has placed this poster on six poster sites across London - to coincide with Tuesday's Commons vote on benefits uprating. The message is very clear...

"The benefits system has needed attention for a long time. The last Labour government spent billions on welfare, but their approach lacked results. During that administration, welfare spending increased by 60 per cent, but that increase was never reflected in the number of people getting back to work. In fact there were half a million more unemployed people by the time Labour left office, compared to when Blair was elected."

Labour claim that many of the benefits being squeezed are received by soldiers, nurses and teachers.

Ed Miliband has often attacked the Government's policies on the NHS, accusing the current administration of either making cuts, or delivering a worse service than Mr Miliband implies Labour would have been delivering had they remained in government.

His attacks have often been undermined by Labour's record on the NHS in Wales. In the devolved administration in Wales, Labour will cut the health budget by £534 million in real terms between 2011-12 and 2014-15, including a cut of £246 million in real terms between 2011-12 and 2012-13, the biggest year-on year cut to the Welsh health budget since devolution began.

As a result, waiting times are higher in Wales, cancer patients are being denied life-prolonging drugs which they would have access to if they lived in England, and spending on medicines has "decreased at a faster rate than elsewhere in the UK", according to the Office for Health Economics.

But now Ed Miliband is being undermined in Scotland. Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont has proven to be a more sensible and mature leader than one might have predicted. This morning, she has acknowledged that the current free tuition system for Scottish students is "not sustainable", and contributions must be made towards university education in future.

Lamont, a former teacher, also made some hard-hitting criticisms of Scottish school and higher education performance, saying schools had once led the world but have now "fallen behind". She said: "We are no longer top of the table and a smug regard for past glories is damaging and dangerous".

"Johann Lamont has now shown her true colours and they are Tory blue. There is barely a scintilla of difference between her plan to abolish free education and the disastrous fees regime introduced by the Tories south of the Border."

In stark contrast to Lamont's approach, Ed Miliband has consistently dodged the opportunity to acknowledge that the challenges Britain faces mean that any government in power at the moment would have to take a very serious look at some of the obligations and services the state currently finds itself providing.

Labour will be able to introduce three new Members of Parliament when the House next meets. The party won three by-elections on Thursday, in Manchester Central, Corby and Cardiff South and Penarth. Will they bring some expert wisdom to Parliament? Perhaps they leave behind distinguished careers? Have any of them courageously served their country, as Dan Jarvis, Labour's victorious Barnsley Central candidate, had?

Alas no. All three Labour candidates are products of the Westminster and public sector elites. Let's take a look at them.

Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth): An Oxford graduate, and former advisor to Labour's Shadow Foreign Secretary, Douglas Alexander. Doughty last worked for Oxfam's Welsh office.

Andy Sawford (Corby): Son of Phil Sawford, who was the MP for the neighbouring Kettering constituency from 1997 until 2005. Has worked for the Local Government Association, as chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit, and in PR. The Sunday Times said of Sawford (£): "[T]alking to him was an unnerving and even slightly chilling experience. It was like talking to a malfunctioning cyborg. He answered not a single question directly and simply repeated the same answer about how the voters would be better off voting for him rather than a “cheerleader for Cameron”."

Lucy Powell (Manchester Central): Another Oxford graduate, and former advisor to Ed Miliband. Powell has worked for a number of quangos and a Labour MP. After losing a different parliamentary seat in Manchester in 2010, Powell ran Ed Miliband's leadership campaign. Powell is also a former director of the notorious Britain in Europe group, and said as recently as this summer: "I’ve always argued that Britain should be at the centre of Europe rather than on its fringes."

All parties are guilty of choosing candidates who have backgrounds in politics and related organisations, but these new MPs seem distinctly unplaced to bring a fresh approach to Labour in Parliament.

The results of the recent elections to Labour's National Executive Committee (NEC), the Party's governing body, were announced yesterday. While the results cannot reasonably be said to represent a "lurch to the left", since five out of six of the NEC members were simply re-elected, and the sixth, a Blairite, replaced another Blairite, it's still worth considering the very left-wing ideals and activities of the members of the NEC.

The most popular candidate, with 31,682 votes, was Ken Livingstone. There's been enough written about Livingstone over the years for me not to have to revisit much of it here, but suffice to say his council tax rises, flirtations with dictatorships like Cuba and Venezuela, and mismanagement of City Hall mean he is unlikely to be the one to tell Ed Miliband to take a sensible policy option.

The second most popular candidate was Ann Black, a trade union member since 1979, with policies to match the era. She is sceptical about Trident, and has a list of unaffordable, unrealistic, and out of touch policies:

"Personally I support properly-funded public services, comprehensive education, better employment rights, freedom from discrimination, joined-up transport, environmental sustainability, respect for local government, pensions and other benefits linked to earnings, and a positive role in Europe."

"We must tackle the tabloids on welfare, crime and immigration: people who want to be really nasty to scroungers, yobs and foreigners will vote Tory anyway, so we might as well take the moral high ground and give ourselves something worth fighting for."

Ed Miliband, in his interview with the Guardian this morning, came out with a rather bizarre proposal. He said that Labour is considering "organising the bulk purchase of cheap electricity to sell at a discount" to ordinary households, to be distributed through Labour's grassroots:

"Miliband said: "It is an outstanding idea. It might involve working with, or emulating what [the activist organisation] 38 degrees and Which? magazine are trying to do, which is to sign up people to bulk buy energy from the energy companies.

"We are thinking of going to the energy companies as the Labour party so that 'responsible capitalism' is not just an idea, but something practical. We think we may be able to deliver it through our grassroots network.""

Given that Labour have hardly done an inspirational job as a political party, attempting to juggle Westminster politics with something as complex as being an energy supplier would not seem to be a logical next step, and it's doubtful consumers would take Miliband's proposal seriously.

Charles Hendry, the Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change, has issued the following statement, pushing back against Miliband's new idea:

"Labour seem to under the delusion that they are a trusted brand like Which?, but why would anyone buy their electricity from the people who bankrupted the economy? Labour had 13 years to deal with the energy market, but on their watch energy prices skyrocketed. It's all very well for Ed Miliband to talk about cutting bills, two years ago he was in the Cabinet, as Energy Secretary, and yet he did nothing to help families with their bills."

While Miliband is focused on energy bills, it might be worth someone pointing out to him that by not adopting the Government's Feed-in Tariff reductions for small and larger-scale solar panels, Labour's plans would mean an extra £90 a year for the average household's electricity bill.

Miliband's appearance on ITV's Daybreak this morning may be the worst example of this pandering yet. He tried to pass himself off as some sort of Euro-sceptic:

“I’m very concerned about what David Cameron has done because he trumpeted last December that he got a great deal for Britain, he’d protected us and everything and the way that Europe was going to go about this treaty, what they were going to do wasn’t going to affect Britain. Now he seems to have sold us down the river on a lot of things [my emphasis] so I’m going to be asking him in the House of Commons today what exactly has he agreed to, what protections has he got for Britain. I take a simple view – he would have been better off staying at the table and negotiating for Britain, rather than actually pretending that he had made great progress and then failing to do so.”

Ed Miliband is a conventional Europhile, and it's hard to see how any serious person could view this "sold us down the river" attack with anything other than amusement. Last month, Miliband was condemning the Prime Minister's "catastrophic mistake" in exercising Britain's veto. Now he's suggesting that he would have gone further in demanding powers back for Britain. Miliband is plumbing the depths of opportunistic politics. He transparently does not believe what he is saying about Europe (or perhaps he hasn't decided what he believes). He should resist the urge to attack the Government on every issue. It would save him a lot of trouble, since he's set himself up today as an easy target for "flip-flopper" assaults.

A week on from Ed Miliband's sixth re-launch, it would be timely to review his progress. Has he managed to persuade the public of his credibility at last? Has he managed to thrash the Coalition in the polls? Is his Party settled and united behind his leadership? It seems not.

Ed Balls' big policy speech hinted at Labour wishing to earn economic credibility: "In a speech to the Fabian Society on Saturday, Balls said he accepted every spending cut being imposed by the coalition and endorsed George Osborne's public sector pay freeze, adding that it might need to continue beyond the end of the current parliament."

Ed Miliband then supported this stance: "Ed Miliband has backed his shadow chancellor, Ed Balls, saying he cannot promise to reverse any spending cut at this stage, and dismissed criticism of his own leadership as "part of the gig"."

...But at the same time, Miliband said Labour opposes the cuts the Coalition is making: "If Labour was in power now we wouldn't be making those changes. We wouldn't be cutting as far and as fast as the government."

Perhaps this best explains what Miliband's position seems to be: "Labour's newly calibrated position is that it opposes some spending cuts, on the basis they slow recovery, but cannot promise to reinstate any of them ahead of an election."